- Kyle Chua
China's 6G is 100x Faster Than Current 5G - 1TB Download in Just 5sec
Updated: Jun 15, 2022
China continues to assert its dominance in different sectors of the technology sphere as it gains a slight advantage over the U.S.
Perhaps the most notable of which is in the mobile communications space, with one Chinese lab earlier in the year achieving 6G-level wireless transmissions. According to the South China Morning Post, Purple Mountain Laboratories managed to hit transfer speeds of up to a whopping 206.25 gigabits per second within the terahertz frequency band (300GHz~3THz), the so-called bedrock of next-generation mobile communications technology. That’s more than 100x faster than current 5G, which generally peaks at about 20 gigabits per second.
The speeds were reportedly achieved in a lab setting with the support of the government, telecoms giant China Mobile and Fudan University.
Given the vast applications of ultra fast mobile networks for current and future technologies, this is a key breakthrough in favour of China as it continues to engage with the U.S. in a global power struggle for technological superiority. However, the U.S. can still catch up if it invests in the needed resources to develop the technology, with it still in its infancy.
6G is, of course, the successor of 5G in wireless communication technology, and industry stakeholders and network equipment suppliers believe it won’t enter the market until at least 2030. 5G, after all, has yet to be fully rolled out across the globe due to high development and deployment costs.
The breakthrough also underlines how China has been steadily overtaking the U.S. when it comes to certain technologies. The country, for instance, has been gaining ground on the U.S. in market share of advanced technology industries, including IT and information services, computer, electronic and optical products, electrical equipment and pharmaceutical products, among others.
“We see this tug of war in the fact that there was a strong correlation between the change in the respective shares of global output that China and the United States held in advanced industries from 1995 to 2018,” as written in a report of by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based non-profit think tank focused on public policies surrounding technology. Its board includes representatives from Meta, Amazon, Google and Intel.
“In other words, the more ground China gained in these industries, the more the United States lost,” added the report.
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), another U.S. think tank, believes the difference maker is in China’s willingness to spend in supporting industrial policies. The country has outspent everyone else in the world in this metric, allotting at least 1.73% of its GDP to help industries in 2019.
Purple Mountain Laboratories likely benefited from government spending to reach its 6G breakthrough. The experiment was notably supported by a special government project on 6G. If more breakthroughs are to follow, China will likely hold onto its crown of being the leader in wireless communication technology. The country currently has the most 5G base stations in the world with over 1.4 million in operation as of November last year.
China continues to assert its dominance in different sectors of the technology sphere as it gains a slight advantage over the U.S. in its years-long arms race.
One Chinese lab earlier in the year achieving 6G-level wireless transmissions, with transfer speeds of up to a whopping 206.25 gigabits per second. That’s more than 100x faster than current 5G, which generally peaks at about 20 gigabits per second.
The breakthrough was likely possible thanks to China's willingness to spend in supporting industrial policies. The country has outspent everyone else in the world in this metric, allotting at least 1.73% of its GDP to help industries in 2019.